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Re: Topics of keen interest to me ... how about you?

• From: "Pete Cordell" <petexmldev@codalogic.com>
• To: "John Cowan" <johnwcowan@gmail.com>,"Bill Kearney" <wkearney@g...>
• Date: Tue, 13 Aug 2013 12:16:25 +0100

Original Message From: "John Cowan"
> On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Bill Kearney wrote:

>> And just how would the UI have been any better?  Give the limits of the
>> tech at the time.
>>
> The problem with phones is the assignment of arbitrary digit strings 
> rather
> than meaningful letter strings.  That was not significantly
> technology-bound.

The rotary dial of early phones was very tightly coupled with the operation 
and routing of the early Strowger exchanges.  A rotary dial containing the 
full ASCII set would have been an impressive beast (and wouldn't have 
satisfied the Germans, although Mr Strowger might not have been too bothered 
by that)!  And probably overkill when numbers were of the form "Cricklewood 
243".

Interestingly now we hide phone numbers and e-mail addresses inside our 
address books and don't really see either on a day-to-day basis.  And I 
agree with Mike Kay that populating your address book with a phone number is 
just as easy as with an email address.

And some of us do remember numbers better than we do words.  I can remember 
the credit card number I had a university, which was a while ago now!

Pete Cordell
Codalogic Ltd
C++ tools for C++ programmers, http://codalogic.com
Read & write XML in C++, http://www.xml2cpp.com
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "John Cowan" <johnwcowan@gmail.com>
To: "Bill Kearney" <wkearney@gmail.com>
Cc: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>; "xml-dev OASIS" 
<xml-dev@lists.xml.org>
Sent: Monday, August 12, 2013 10:31 PM
Subject: Re:  Topics of keen interest to me ... how about you?


On Mon, Aug 12, 2013 at 9:21 AM, Bill Kearney <wkearney@gmail.com> wrote:


> And just how would the UI have been any better?  Give the limits of the
> tech at the time.
>

The problem with phones is the assignment of arbitrary digit strings rather
than meaningful letter strings.  That was not significantly
technology-bound.


> Please tell me you’re not that stupid.
>


>  **
>
 My friends have done it for me.

-- 
GMail doesn't have rotating .sigs, but you can see mine at
http://www.ccil.org/~cowan/signatures

• References:
  • Topics of keen interest to me ... how about you?
    • From: "Costello, Roger L." <costello@mitre.org>
  • Re: Topics of keen interest to me ... how about you?
    • From: "Bill Kearney" <wkearney@gmail.com>
  • Re: Topics of keen interest to me ... how about you?
    • From: John Cowan <johnwcowan@gmail.com>
  • Re: Topics of keen interest to me ... how about you?
    • From: "Bill Kearney" <wkearney@gmail.com>
  • Re: Topics of keen interest to me ... how about you?
    • From: John Cowan <johnwcowan@gmail.com>
  • Re: Topics of keen interest to me ... how about you?
    • From: "Bill Kearney" <wkearney@gmail.com>
  • Re: Topics of keen interest to me ... how about you?
    • From: John Cowan <johnwcowan@gmail.com>